


Heart of the Ocean, Love of the Sea

by AvaCelt



Series: Gothic Horror Prompt Fills - 2020 [5]
Category: Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gay people in love, Gothic, Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Inspired by the Raven, Jack/Yami Propaganda, M/M, Post-Rescue from Spade Kingdom, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tabata please let them have a happy ending i am begging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:13:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26624212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt
Summary: Four hundred pounds of muscle and a sword don't mean anything anymore, but lesser men have loved and been loved in return, so why can't Yami Sukehiro? [Yami/Jack, post-rescue, canon divergence, spoilers up to chapter 262]
Relationships: Jack the Ripper/Yami Sukehiro
Series: Gothic Horror Prompt Fills - 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900357
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Heart of the Ocean, Love of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I was listening to _The Titanic_ soundtrack while writing this, what of it (ಥ﹏ಥ)

Yami doesn't wake up screaming. There's barely a rustle, much less any movement of the limbs. There's no panicked breathing, no grasping sheets for purchase as he tries to get his breathing under control. No threatening to cut someone with his rusty pocket knife because his hands still haven't healed enough to pick up his sword properly, no scrambling off the bed and crouching on the floor like a rabid dog, ready to pounce – there's none of that. Yami doesn't wake up screaming. He wakes up quiet as a mouse, engulfed in Stygian darkness.

The darkness doesn't last forever, of course. He's far, far away from the Spade monarchs' castle now. The darkness is temporary, just like the cold. When he finally forces himself to open his eyes, he's been awake for almost fifteen minutes. It's a process, according to Owen. The more time he spends at home, the more his body will begin to trust its surroundings again. Home is where the heart is, after all. Yami blinks lazily up at the wooden beams and clean windows that make up his ceiling. His home is his squad's home base, a castle that's on loan from an exiled noble. Unlike Vangeance who has multiple homes to heal in, one with the Golden Dawn and the other in the arms of an elf, Yami has one home, and it's this shifting castle.

The warm body next to him is proof that he's lying.

This time, there's sound. Yami turns over to his side, the bed whining with his shuffling weight. When he's finally facing the warm body sleeping next him, he takes a moment to drink in the sight. Bony, pale skin glitters in the moonlight. Years ago, Yami told Henry that he was used to waking up with the sun and falling asleep to the moon. He'd alluded to the fact that he'd been homeless for some time in his youth, a time where the sun and moon were constant companions with or without his consent, but the latter had taken the off-hand comment as a request, and thus adorned Yami's room with ceiling windows that brought the sky right to his lap.

Right now, beams of moonlight illuminate Jack the Ripper's neck and shoulders. Skin stretches tightly over protruding angles, and invites Yami's greatest vice.

Yami can't help himself. His meaty fingers touch a sharp collarbone. The blood stirs in his stomach when the warmth washes over him. Jack is pale and skinny, and can pass himself off as a corpse on some days, but he's the warmest body Yami's ever come in contact with. One touch, and heat blossoms in his core. He wants nothing more than to drown in Jack's fire, let Jack hold and squeeze every bit of cold out of his bones, let Jack pour his warmth into Yami's cold, broken body.

He wants to shake Jack awake and demand that he hold him. Yami wants a lot. He wants Jack to snipe at him and then drape his long, gangly body over Yami's freezing bones. Yami wants to be kissed to life. He wants to be reminded that he's no longer trapped in the cloying darkness of the Zogratis' castle. He wants affection and love. He wants everything he almost lost.

He wants things that he didn't even realize he had in the first place.

This time, he squeezes Jack's shoulder. Jack doesn't move, is too deep in his sleep to make a fuss. Yami can try again, but first, he's going to drink some more, drink in the sight, the beauty, the warmth.

He counts the days since he's been home. He thinks it's six months now, maybe seven? Yami's memory isn't as good as it used to be. The Black Bulls told him he'd been captured for less than a week, but they didn't know the dungeons of Spade. Yami remembers the pitch black darkness. A week had felt like an eternity. Yami thought he'd died and gone straight to Hell.

Yami exhales, and draws circles on Jack's back. Jack snores lightly, barely acknowledging the touch, oblivious to Yami's gaze.

Yami decides it's been seven months since his rescue, and _maybe_ he'll confirm with Owen when he goes to his next weekly check-up, but for now, he'll settle for seven. Seven months – that's how long he's been home. That's how long he's been attached to Jack's hip. Jack was the one who found him crucified against the dungeon wall, Zenon's bones sticking out of his body, killing and saving him at the same time. If Jack had taken out a single bone without a healer present, Yami would have bled to death, but Jack wasn't an idiot even if he was dumb, so he did the next best thing. Yami remembers watching him hack and slash through the bones until most of them were sliced to bits, leaving only a couple of inches that would be easy to pluck out. Jack had caught Yami when he came tumbling down to the ground, and then he'd carried Yami home.

Jack is his best friend. His best friend caught his large, hulking body before it hit the ground, and then carried it to safety, and Yami will never forget it. Yami will never let Jack go.

Owen doesn't tell him, but he knows he's a burden. He knows Jack can be doing literally anything else, but instead, he's sleeping next to Yami. He's looking after Yami, his squad in En Ringard's hands until Yami is back on his feet, until Yami is whole again.

But Yami will never be whole again. The best he can do is be half of who he used to be. The bulging muscles and eight pack are moot, now that he has holes in his feet, wrists, and clavicle. It'll take another year and multiple surgeries before he's able to hold up his sword up again. Now it's Yami and his rusty pocketknife, but at least Jack is here. Jack won't leave him alone, and Yami loves him for it.

And that's another thing – Jack loves him too. Jack is _in_ love with him, confessed to Yami while he was carrying Yami back to the others, told Yami he loved Yami's smile and his stupid laugh while Yami was slumped on his back, half-passed out, told Yami that he'd loved him since the first day they'd met, and that he would love Yami until their last days.

Jack loves him, so he does it. He pulls on Jack's shoulder and turns him around, makes him face Yami so that he can prove to Yami that he _still_ loves him.

Except it's not Jack that turns around, it's Zenon Zogratis – and this time, Yami _does_ scream.

“GET OFF, GET OFF, GET OFF!”

Zenon's on top of him, pinning his arms and legs to the cold, hard floor with his bone appendages. Floor? When did it get so dark? Yami doesn't understand, but he _does_. The windows and wooden beams are gone, and now it's just pitch black, just Zenon kneeling on Yami's chest, suffocating him, killing him. Zenon's fingers ghost over his prickly beard before grasping his chin. A sharp nail digs into the skin and draws blood. Yami's in pain. He wants to go home, home is where the heart is, home is where he goes to sleep with the moon and wakes up with the sun, it's where his squadmates are, where his Jack is. Home – this isn't home, this is Spade. This is isn't Jack, it's Zenon.

“Please,” he begs, because he's only ever begged once before, and that was when he washed ashore on the beaches of Clover Kingdom, far away from his first home. He begs because he can't lose the Black Bulls too, can't lose Jack. What are swords, and muscle, and magic for if he can't hold onto the things keeping him sane?

“Please,” he whispers one more time. He'll beg as long as he has to, as long as he can go home.

Zenon puts his bloodied fingertip in his mouth and sucks lightly, as if Yami's blood is cheap cattle, as if Yami is just prey waiting to be devoured.

Zenon's knees dig into his ribs and break a bone, and Yami screams again because it hurts like hell, because this _is_ hell, and Yami is dying. Zenon peers silently while Yami cries for mercy. It's dark in this dungeon. There is no Jack the Ripper to rescue him, no Black Bulls for Yami to come home to. Yami cries, and Zenon presses down. Yami screams again, but this time, they transform into choking sounds. Zenon's hand is around his throat. It's squeezing the life out of Yami and he's crying, he's crying, he's cryi-

“It's me, asshole, wake up! Wake up, Yami!”

“Please,” Yami croaks, his voice hoarse and scratchy, his lungs aching for oxygen, his hands pinned to his bed by Jack's spindly elbow, while Jack's face is mere centimeters from his face, his home, _his Jack_.

“It's me,” Jack repeats, much more softly than before. Yami's wheezing. His chest hurts, his throat's closed up, and he's crying. He's crying and he's home.

Jack releases his hands and snakes a hand underneath his waist. Jack's thin, so thin that Yami thought that he was starving the first time they met. Yami had offered to buy him dinner at the local seafood festival, and the man had just nodded, and later when the taller man had, had several beers in his stomach, he'd told Yami to go fuck himself with the biggest smile Yami had ever seen. That's how they became friends. That's how Jack became a part of his home.

Jack pulls him up with one arm. Yami finds himself sitting upright, his lungs quieter, even if his throat still hurts. He can breathe now. Jack is here; he's home; he's safe.

His eyes dart around his surroundings. Yami spies his pants draped over a stool, and his utility belt on the floor. His grimoire is on the armoire next to Jack's. Jack's clothes and skinguards are neatly folded and tucked into the shelf next to the stool. The sun's bearing down on him, and the feeling of all that mana just outside of his door is telling him that he's home, that he's awake, that it's early afternoon, and that Jack and his friends are all anxiously waiting to see if he's OK, if he's alive, if he's still their Yami.

Yami presses his palms against his eyes so that the darkness returns. He recalls Owen's lessons about home, about training his body to associate darkness with something other than the dungeons of the Zogratis' castle, to remember that light and dark went hand-in-hand, and that he wasn't alone.

Yami's not alone. He counts his breaths and exhales. “I'm OK now,” he mumbles to the man holding him by the waist.

“Yeah?” Jack says, wrapping the other arm around his waist before pulling him into an embrace.

“Yeah,” Yami answers, letting his hands drop from his eyes before pressing his face into Jack's bony chest.

Jack's rail thin, but his body is a furnace, and Yami melts because this is _home_.

Jack lets go, and Yami follows, albeit hesitantly. Jack doesn't speak, just holds Yami's face and presses their foreheads together. Jack has to stoop because he's so tall, and when he stoops, he looks like a giraffe. Yami laughs abruptly. He loves a giraffe – is _in_ love with a giraffe. It's both absurd and amazing, because sometimes Jack is a praying mantis, and sometimes he's a snake, but right now he's a giraffe stooping over to kiss its beloved's forehead, and Yami lets him. Yami grasps his hands, squeezes them, exhales again. He's home, he's breathing in Jack's scent, and he's home.

“Everything OK?” Finral squeaks from behind the door, because he's the squad' sacrificial lamb, and if he doesn't take the first dive, who will?

“Everything's fine, taxi man,” Yami barks from his place in front of Jack the Ripper, the strongest man that ever lived, _his_ man.

“Then we're coming in,” and that's Nero, the centuries old birdwoman who's taken to reminding Yami that she's older, wiser, and undoubtedly stronger, and now the de facto advisor of the squad now that Vanessa's captain and Finral her lieutenant.

And come they do, one after the other, having learned early on that barging into Yami's personal space is off-limits, along with loud noises, prolonged darkness in the parts of the house Yami frequents, and too many closed doors. Now they ask before they enter, even if they don't knock, and Yami loves them, loves the family he's created, loves the home Henry Legolant has allowed him, loves everything that keeps him sane, keeps him human.

“Ginger water?” Charmy asks, proffering a cup filled to the brim with water mixed with ginger extract, cumin, and salt, a mixture that soothes Yami's throat and settles his stomach every time there's an episode with his sleep apnea.

He doesn't want to let go of Jack, but Jack is wiser, even if he is dumb. He grabs the cup and holds it front of Yami's face like it's one of his knives, smiling maniacally.

“Drink it or I'll kill ya,” says Jack, because Jack is dumber than Yami, and they're two dumb dodos living together in a house they don't even own.

“Fuck you, weirdo,” Yami grumbles, but he takes the cup, downs the water, and exhales again, long and loud, releasing whatever's left of the nightmare. The cup is back in Charmy's hand before he knows it, and he's hugging the little woman who cares about him so much, and Jack's chuckling, and Finral's crying, and Yami's OK. He's OK now.

Yami exhales again, and this time, his family exhales with him.


End file.
